Mackenzie stared at the wall, intensely concentrating on nothing. She was furious, for reasons she couldn’t entirely pinpoint, but angry nonetheless. As she continued unblinkingly staring at the wall, she mentally attempted to find the source of the irritant. She’d had a lovely past couple of days, nothing wrong there. So why was she in a frothing rage the moment that her brother even opened his mouth? Why did even the inkling of her sister’s presence set her to scream for no particular reason? She muttered a few curses, and blinked.

The wall came back into focus, as did the glass in her hand. It was an empty glass, wasn’t even glass, really. Cheap plastic, like everything else she owned. Didn’t really own it, either, she thought. Turning sixty degrees in her chair she glanced out the window. The wind buffeted the power line cutting across the glass, but just out of range of the surface. It was always windy here, she thought. Windy, rainy, snowy. Rarely did the sun just shine; it was always accompanied by something. She kicked the table next to her computer. This didn’t satisfy her rage, merely increased it by a factor of ten since her toes now hurt. She threw the shoe across the room. Her mother yelled from downstairs, enquiring as to what the hell was going on. But Mackenzie just ignored her.

Standing up, she flipped the chair backwards and grabbed her walkman. She needed to get out of the house, at least for a moment. Shoving the ear buds in place, she cranked up the volume on the player, chagrined because the last thing she had in there was not angsty music by any means, but instead the happy Celtic music she kept in there for inspiration. Rolling her eyes, she resigned herself to listening to the traditional instrumentation instead of throbbing guitars and marched down the stairs and out the door, ignoring the world.

She didn’t know where she was going, but that was fine with her. Maybe she’d find something else to calm her down. She turned the corner onto another street, and slipped. The ear buds ripped out of her ears and she started to cry. It was a stupid thing to cry over, she muttered, and tried to stop but couldn’t. She struggled to her feet, her jeans all soaked with icy water, and she just stood there, the headphones replaced in her ears, listening to the music, trying to use it to calm her down.

At the end of the song, as the light orchestration came to a close, and the jigs and reels began for the next, she took a tentative step forward, and not slipping, she continued her journey, talking to herself, telling herself that tomorrow would be better – tomorrow she would be one day closer to her goal, tomorrow she could deal with the frustrations of today.

Finally returning home, just as the sky grew dark for the evening; she opened the door hesitantly, and stepped inside. The usual jokes were cracked; she rolled her eyes and threw her coat on the chair. Snapping off a somewhat witty remark in return, she slunk back upstairs and hid for a few minutes til her mother called her once again to help with dinner that she would once again ridicule her daughter’s assistance with, inflaming Mackenzie even more.